Thales Awarded ADS-B/WAM System Contract
Print this page Send to friendPublished on ASDNews: Jan 26, 2010
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(January 25, 2010) -- Thales UK today announces that it has been awarded a contract to supply a Wide-Area Multilateration (WAM) system to National Air Traffic Services (NATS). This is to be a trial system to allow NATS Research & Development to investigate the operational capabilities of Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) and WAM to support their future en-route surveillance strategy. This is a project that NATS will run in partnership with the Eurocontrol CASCADE programme through its CRISTAL UK 3 project.
The project will consist of a six-sensor active WAM/ADS-B system located around London and covering the airports of Heathrow, Gatwick, London City, Luton and Stansted. This will be used to validate the new technology against a proven radar surveillance picture. The system will utilise existing NATS sites and infrastructure to allow data to be collected and processed at the central processing station based at NATS Corporate Technical Centre (CTC) at Southampton.
A key outcome of the CRISTAL UK 3 will be to validate the safety of ADS-B/WAM in meeting the current 3nm separation standard, which is essential to operations in busy terminal areas like London.
The ADS-B/WAM solution is based on the latest generation of single-board equipments supplied by Thales. This is one of several key installations in Europe where Thales has been selected following a call for tenders against stiff competition, ensuring that Thales products and system solutions lead the surveillance market.
The Thales MAGS system is part of a surveillance product family that includes ADS-B, TIS-B, FIS-B, ADS-R, local-area multilateration and wide-area multilateration capabilities. The modular product family includes options for redundancy, multiple data links, multiple transmit output power levels and omni-directional or sectored antennas to enable tailored, cost effective solutions for nearly any surveillance application.
Victor Chavez, Deputy CEO of Thales UK, says: "This requirement is another key step in demonstrating that Thales is the supplier of choice in the civil/military surveillance market. The system that Thales is supplying to NATS uses the same technology that Thales is supplying to the USA for the FAA's nationwide surveillance and broadcast services project."
Mark Watson, NATS' Head of CNS/ATM Research, says: "NATS is continually evaluating whether the latest technologies can support or improve its air traffic operations. Therefore, we are particularly interested in determining whether ADS-B and WAM can be used for surveillance to deliver the demanding 3nm separation standard in high-density airspace. We look forward to working with Thales to build the safety case for these technologies in some of the busiest and most complex airspace in the world."